


You're the Fire (and the Flood)

by livia_1291



Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [2]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Typical Violence, Doubt, Dream World, Finnish Mythology - Freeform, Gen, Magic, Not sure why this is written in past tense, Quarantine, and the gore is pretty canon typical, but the others in this series are present tense, don’t @ me it just wanted to be written like this, emil thinks lalli is pretty and powerful and doesn't know what that means for him, emil's relationship to magic, emilalli - Freeform, it's not explicit but it's definitely there, lalli's probably already figured it out and is just biding his time, more magic!!!, no one new dies, poor emil, still not satisfied with this, the archive warnings are just to be safe!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25479850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livia_1291/pseuds/livia_1291
Summary: "What did you do?!"An exploratory fic examining Emil's relationship to Lalli and his magic. Title is from yet another Vance Joy song.
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830850
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	You're the Fire (and the Flood)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trashpocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashpocket/gifts).



There was blood dripping from Lalli’s nose, viscous and thick, and Emil couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. The drops shone impossibly bright against the whiteness of the snow, gleaming like tiny jewels at the exhausted Finn’s feet. It was beautiful, in a strange sort of way. It meant that Lalli was alive, that his heart was beating, and that he hadn’t been eaten while searching for the campsite that Sigrun insisted that they find _tonight_.

(If Lalli had been eaten or otherwise horribly injured, Emil might have blamed her - how was it fair to expect Lalli to be perfect when the rest of them were entitled to their mistakes? Was demanding perfection really worth their scout’s _life_? He could already hear her response ringing in his ears: _“His mistakes cost us more than Mikkel’s or Tuuri’s. There is no margin of error for a scout.”_ )

“You’re bleeding,” he said automatically, as if that needed to be mentioned. Mikkel had already assessed the situation and retreated into the tank for medical supplies, and Sigrun was demanding that Tuuri translate for her weary cousin. Reynir, wide-eyed as ever, peered out of the driver’s cabin, babbling something undoubtably stupid in his strange language until Sigrun pressed her palm to his forehead and shoved him back into the tank, announcing that it was still too dangerous for him to come outside. In reality, Emil knew that she just didn’t want to deal with him right now. Not with their shelter on the line.

The river-fluid murmur of Finnish snapped Emil out of his trance, and he looked up to see Lalli, pen in hand, circling a spot on Tuuri’s map in red ink. The two shared a quick conversation that seemed to leave Tuuri somewhere between impressed and exasperated, and Lalli stood from where he had draped himself across the hood of the cattank, swaying on his feet. Emil reached to steady him, but Lalli lifted his chin and sidestepped him, still too proud to accept his hand.

“He says he found a spot from us, but, um, he’ll need to rest for a bit. It was…” Tuuri paused, brows furrowing as she raked through her vocabulary to find the proper words. “...difficult.”

“That’s a good scout!” Crowed Sigrun, slapping Lalli’s shoulder with an open hand. He was too tired to wince at the unwelcome contact, and when Mikkel ushered him inside for decontamination and medical assistance, he did not try to squirm free. Instead, he lowered his sharp chin to his chest, dozing off on his feet.

“Hey, Tuuri,” Emil slid into the tank beside their skald, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over the back of the passenger seat as he glanced back to the bunkroom, where Mikkel was laying a blanket over Lalli’s unconscious form. “Is he...okay? He seems _really_ tired.”

Lalli went out scouting nearly every night, snow or moonshine, unless Sigrun deemed it to be too dangerous, and that he should stay back with the rest of the crew. Emil had seen him return every morning, without fail, exhausted and sometimes filthy from poking around in dark alleys and crumbling buildings, but never as bone-tired he was now. And he had _certainly_ never come back with a nosebleed. What kind of fight caused an injury like that, anyway?

“Oh, he’s fine,” Tuuri responded absently, absorbed in the map as she plotted out the route to their new camp. “He just spent too much energy, that’s all. He needs to rest up.”

“Right,” Emil murmured dully, staring at the red circle Lalli had drawn. Tuuri seemed wholly unbothered by her cousin’s current state, and far more concerned with how they were going to plow through the rapidly deepening snow. 

The bunkroom was quiet as a tomb when he entered. Lalli lay supine on a mattress on the floor, wrapped in blankets and a soft grey sweater that seemed to be the only article of clothing that he had brought aside from his uniform. His eyes were closed, silver lashes resting against his cheekbones, and when Emil reached out to brush a loose strand of hair from his forehead, he did not stir.

“Lalli?”

No response.

“I...wanted to tell you thanks. For finding us a campsite.”

Nothing. Lalli was utterly still, save for the soft rise and fall of his chest that ressured Emil that he wasn’t dead, just sleeping _very_ soundly. Somewhere outside the tank, Sigrun was calling for him, telling him to grab his flame thrower and hurry up, they still needed to patrol the area before nightfall. Emil stood reluctantly, casting a final glance back over his shoulder at the still form of his friend. If he squinted, he could almost see a flicker of blue around his body, like the diffused glow of the northern lights. When he shook his head and blinked to clear his vision, it was gone.

“Rest well, I guess,” He sighed, throwing his bandolier over his shoulder and swallowing past the doubt creeping like a slow-moving glacier from his stomach to his throat. Something deep within him told him that there were forces at play here that he wasn’t yet ready to understand. 

* * *

_If only we had stayed with the crew,_ Emil lamented to himself as he stared up to the cool grey sky from the bottom of the hole he had tripped into, throwing his hands up in exasperation. Of course this was happening. Anything that could go wrong would go wrong - what had Mikkel called that? Minna’s law? Mathilde’s law? It didn’t matter. The only thing Emil needed to focus on right now was getting out of this mess and rejoining Sigrun, Mikkel, and Reynir.

In his defense, the pit had been covered in a thick layer of ice and snow that made it indistinguishable from the rest of the surrounding terrain. Even sharp-eyed Lalli hadn’t noticed it (or maybe he had noticed it, and just didn’t care to mention it. He had been in an understandably sour mood as of late, refusing to walk beside Emil or even meet his gaze. Emil couldn’t really blame him - he couldn’t imagine how lost Lalli was feeling right now.)

With difficulty, Emil clambered out of the hole, kicking up snow and mud and groaning in complaint when he reached cold daylight again. Before he could open his mouth to properly whine about the inconvenience of falling into a snare of pipes and decaying organic material, Lalli had his fingertips resting on Emil’s parted lips, pale eyes glowing with cold blue light.

Emil knew that look, and it spelled trouble.

The sunlight of a nearby street seemed to momentarily satisfy Lalli’s need for shelter - thank all the Gods that didn’t really exist for daytime - but Emil could feel the earth rumbling beneath their feet, a warning that they were far from safety. Their steps were as light as possible, but the resounding _crunch_ of the old snow was impossible to avoid. 

Emil was just about to ask if it might be better for them to seek some actual shelter to avoid whatever was putting Lalli on edge when something long and tentacled fell from a jagged crack in the side of a tall building. It hissed like a hot coal when it hit the frozen-over top layer of a snowbank, and Lalli tensed, becoming as still and rigid as stone as he watched it writhe beneath the light of the sun, and then die.

“Lalli?” Emil whispered, his voice still too loud in the silent city. “We should really-”

And then all hell broke loose. 

Later, in quarantine on the safety of an Icelandic ship, Emil would try to remember exactly what had transpired. It had all happened so _quickly_. There had been a sound like a thunderclap, and then the same building that the little troll had fallen out of had exploded as if someone had rigged it with dynamite. A giant, one with too many heads to count and horrible, twisted tentacles for limbs had burst from the wreckage, and Lalli had grabbed Emil’s hand and looked him in the eyes with an urgency that Emil had seen only once before, when they were about to be overrun by a horde of ghosts and beasts. Even without words, his message could not have been clearer: _run_.

Together, they fled through the city, sticking to the middle of the sunlit street. The shadowy margins of the sidewalks were choked with smaller trolls loping effortlessly across the iced-over snow, and Emil tried not to look at them. Occasionally, one would lunge into the sun in an attempt to snap at their heels (or, rather, to snap at Emil’s heels - Lalli was too quick for them) before hissing and recoiling from the light. 

_We have to get out of this city, before night falls._

Lalli ran like it was what he had been born to do, and if they hadn’t been in so much trouble, Emil might have stopped to admire the beauty of it. He _flew_ across the snow, footsteps barely breaking the skin of ice that had solidified over the powder. With the easy elegance of a deer clearing a fence, he lept from the crumbling remains of a dock onto the ice of what seemed to be a vast, frozen lake, skidding to a stop and glancing over his shoulder to make sure Emil was following. He was barely even breathing hard.

There was no time for trepidation. Gracelessly, Emil stumbled onto the ice, spitting and swearing when it gave under his right foot. Gravel and sand crunched beneath the sole of his boot while chilly water lapped hungrily at his pants, searching for a way to seep in and freeze him to death before the monsters had time to rip him to shreds.

 _“No, no, no!”_ he whispered, pulling his leg free and struggling back up onto the too-thin ice. Lalli was waiting for him twenty paces ahead, pretty almond eyes wide and frantic as he watched Emil struggle, one hand extended in a plea for help.

“It won’t hold me,” he gasped, and Lalli hurried back to his side, dropping to his knees beside Emil as they watched the smaller trolls prowl the edge of the lake, shrieking and wailing their hunger to the darkening sky like a pack of ravenous wolves. “Lalli, you have to go, run, don’t worry about me, I’ll-”

And then, all together, the trolls went silent. Emil held his breath - maybe they had lost interest? - but Lalli had neither moved, nor relaxed. With a horrible scrabbling sound, the giant careened around the corner and into the street, fixing Emil and Lalli with its thousand sightless eyes. When it roared, showing a mouth full of too many rotting teeth, Emil realized with sudden, striking clarity, that _they were about to die._ He was about to open his mouth to tell Lalli how nice it had been to know him, and that he was the closest thing to a true friend that Emil had ever had, when Lalli stood in one fluid movement and extended his hands in front of himself, fingers splayed wide and eyes narrowing in determination.

The giant was bearing down on them now. Up close, it was even more terrible, with flaps of rotting skin and bloody spittle dripping from the corners of its gaping maw. It seemed to have fused with the building it had nested in: a concrete collar fanned out around what might have been its neck, and a massive slab of wood covered its back like some horrible, splintered bastardization of a shield, sheltering it from the sun’s dying light. 

Lalli stood firm and fearless, feet planted on the ice as he stared the giant down with resolve humming through every muscle in his lithe body. When the massive creature lunged for them, he threw himself forward, hands first, and Emil closed his eyes, waiting for a hundred thousand teeth to crunch his body into a bloody pulp.

Death never came. Slowly, Emil opened his eyes, and then immediately shut them again for fear that he really _had_ died. Lalli’s head was tucked and his eyes were closed as he pushed back against the creature still dead-set on destroying them both. A warm, golden light radiated out from his extended palms to surround them both, keeping the monster at bay. It was as though the mage had called the sun onto the ice, and now they were sitting in the halo of an eclipse. The giant gave an ear-splitting shriek as it swallowed the raw power being shoved down its throat, and reared back, flailing as it began to break apart from the inside. Emil couldn’t look away from Lalli’s massive display of power, enraptured and maybe a little terrified. So _that_ was what he was capable of. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to show Emil back in his aunt and uncle’s house in Mora.

Just as suddenly as the brilliant light had flashed into being, it faded, receding back into Lalli’s hands. He gasped, choked and shuddering, and then stumbled backwards, into the safety of Emil’s outstretched arms.

“Lalli!” The Finn crumpled into his lap, eyes fluttering weakly, and Emil folded over to shield him with the bulk of his body as the giant disintegrated around them, sending chunks of decomposing flesh and shards of ice flying as the frozen surface broke apart. Blood, old and sour, turned the iron grey water brown, and salty spray from the massive splash told Emil that it was not, in fact, a lake that they had landed on. It was an inlet, leading straight to the wild north sea, and they were adrift on it.

“Lalli, Lalli,” he gasped, running a trembling hand over his unconscious companion’s cheek as their little ice floe drifted farther and farther from shore, leaving them alone in unforgiving water. _Why did you do that? You should have left me and run._

“What did you _do_?”

* * *

“So it’s real,” Emil breathed, angling his chair to confront the newest fixture of his usually completely ordinary dreams. “It’s all real.”

Lalli was resting recumbent on the white tufted couch from Emil’s childhood, a heavy fur cloak draped over the armrest beside him. He was wearing clothes that Emil had never seen on him before: birchbark shoes and long, high leather gloves that stopped somewhere beneath the short sleeves of his blue and white tunic. It looked good on him. Powerful, somehow.

“What’s real?” Lalli asked, not even bothering to look up from the slice of strawberry and vanilla cake he was devouring. For a cake that wasn’t really there, it was nice, fluffy and moist like the cakes his mother would make on very special occasions. 

There was a pause as Emil gathered the courage to respond, and when he did, his voice was soft, almost timid. 

“ _Magic_. You...you did magic, back there on the ice. You saved my _life_. And then when I walked into that building today, you did it _again_.”

“Oh. That.” Lalli shrugged, taking another forkful of cake and removing the strawberry garnish with nimble fingers, setting it on the edge of the plate. He had never been able to stomach conflicting textures like berries and cake. “Yeah.”

“You knocked yourself out. Is this like that time when Sigrun sent you to find us a new campsite, and you slept for a week afterwards? How long are you going to be out?”

Another shrug, but this time, the gesture was far less nonchalant. The mage drew in on himself, setting the half-finished cake aside and staring down to his shoes. 

“No. This is different. That time, I lost my _luonto,_ my nature.” At Emil’s confused expression, he elaborated, “It’s a piece of my soul. I had to wait for it to come back to me. This time, I…” He swallowed, and in that moment, he was fragile, like the expensive glass figurines placed on high shelves in Emil’s childhood room. “I don’t really know what I did. I’ve never tried anything that desperate. I don’t know how long I’ll be out.” There was a pause, tenuous and uncomfortable. “I don’t know if I’ll wake up.”

“You don’t know?” Emil stared incredulously, and Lalli scowled at him from his perch, drawing the quilt that he had pilfered from a nearby armchair tighter around himself. 

“I don’t know everything, stupid!”

“You know more than I do.” With a heavy sigh, Emil sank down on the opposite end of the couch, folding his arms behind his head. “Doesn’t it bother you? That...some people don’t believe you’re a mage?”

“No.” Slowly, like a hedgehog uncurling from its spiky armor, Lalli unfolded himself and reached for his cake, taking a thoughtful bite before deciding to speak further. “Other people’s belief in my magic doesn’t change what I can or can’t do. I don’t need to prove myself to the world. Besides, it’s disrespectful to throw magic around for everyone who wants to see it.” 

Right. Magic comes with a price. If Lalli performed a spell every time he was asked to prove himself, he’d drain himself dry, and his gods might stop listening to his pleas. A lurch of guilt caught Emil off-guard, and he swallowed, staring at his own folded hands. 

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t fair to you. And even though I wasn’t, you still used your...your _magic_ to save me.” When Lalli turned his head, Emil caught sight of blood in his pale hair, long-dry, but still visible against the soft silvery grey. _Today, when he called me back to myself. I almost killed us both._

“Oh.” Lalli kept his own eyes fixed on his now-empty plate, tucking his legs beneath his body and curling into the arm of the couch. “Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.”

A few more minutes passed in companionable silence before Emil spoke up again, jolting Lalli from his exhausted stupor. 

“Why did you do that? The spell, I mean, back on the ice. You knew it was risky.” Emil asked, wrapping his arms around his middle and leaning forward. “You could have run. The ice would have held you.” _Why did you knock yourself out of your own body just to save me?_

This time, Lalli did deign to look at him, moon-bright eyes clear as a winter night. It was like he was looking straight into Emil’s heart, and for all Emil knew of his real powers, he might have been doing just that. 

“I didn’t know it was risky...I didn’t really think. You would have done the same for me,” murmured Lalli, and Emil lifted his gaze, startled by the realization that _yes_ , he would have done the same. He would have burned the whole city to the ground if it meant keeping Lalli from harm’s way. Something passed between them, a sort of understanding, and he had to sit on his hands to keep from reaching out to Lalli - he was sure that the mage wouldn’t much care for his touch.

“I really thought I was going to die back there,” Emil sighed, falling back against the backrest of the couch and letting his eyes flutter shut. In the dark space behind his lids, he could still see the spirit that had called out to him, hungry and lonely, and he forced his eyes open again, fixing them instead on the crystal chandelier glittering in the low light of the dining room.

When Lalli replied, his voice was quiet, and if Emil hadn’t known better, he might have called the rare, soft emotion coloring his words _compassion_.

“I know. I did too.”

Emil had nothing more to say to that.

* * *

Quarantine was boring, but Emil had never been so grateful for a proper bed in his _life._ Sure, it was small, and only slightly softer than the floor, but it was his, and he didn’t have to share the space with anyone. Lalli was on the other side of a glass wall, and if he raised his voice a little, he could talk to Sigrun across a narrow hallway that separated their pods, but she spent most of her time cheating at games with Mikkel and complaining about how bored she was.

Honestly, he told himself, it could have been so much worse. They had beds and clean clothes, and there were games and books to pass the time. Nothing was trying to kill them, and the ship was large enough to keep them from constant seasickness (but not large enough for any Finnish-speaking crew members, apparently.)

“Then stop somewhere and pick one up!” Emil had snapped after being told that there were no Finnish speakers aside from Lalli onboard the ship. The translator had given him a falsely sympathetic smile that made his blood boil and pushed her cart on, away to the upper deck. _She has no idea._

Later, when he was offered a cart of books by one of the kindly old nurses, he picked a battered Finnish phrasebook from between two heavy Icelandic sagas, and studied it long past quiet hours, whispering the words over and over to himself until they made sense. He wasn’t perfect (and he knew he would never match the lilting fluidity of Lalli’s speech,) but at least he would be understood. If nobody else was going to put in the effort to talk to Lalli, then he would.

They still dreamed together. That was a small blessing; it meant that Lalli wasn’t _completely_ alone. He had seemed rather despondent as of late, electing to sleep away the days under his bed unless Emil cajoled him into playing a round of chess with his broken Finnish. (He was pretty sure Lalli agreed just to get him to shut up.)

“Are you okay?” he had asked one night, when they were sitting side-by-side on the edge of a wooden dock overlooking a lake that Emil was sure he had never seen before, but that Lalli seemed to know like the back of his hand. “You hardly do anything but sleep. Did you even eat anything today?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” insisted Lalli, but the dull grief in his eyes told Emil everything he needed to know. “The food here is gross, and I’m not hungry.” When he threw his bobber again, the line sliced the dream in two, and it disintegrated around them. With a resounding _pop,_ Emil found himself back at his childhood table, alone and surrounded by far too much food for one person.

“Oh, okay,” he murmured, shaking his head in an attempt to cling to the lucidity that being near Lalli had brought him. “See you in the morning?”

Being near Lalli brought him so _much,_ both in dreams and in the waking world. It was hard to fathom his life without him in it now, even though they had only met a few months ago. He was electric, like a thunderstorm in the form of a boy with lightning eyes and hair like cold rain. He was all of the destructive power of a wildfire, and the rebirth that came from the ashes. He was _magic_ , in every sense of the word. Maybe that was part of the reason behind the fluttery feeling Emil got every time Lalli looked at him.

Emil hadn’t even considered the possibility that things like mages or gods could be real when he had agreed to sign on for this mission, but then again, he had never met anyone like Lalli. Now, having seen the world through the eyes of a mage, he couldn’t deny it any longer. There were things in this world that he wasn’t meant to comprehend, but that didn’t make those things less real.

“How am I going to tell this to Siv and Torbjörn?” He groaned, running a hand through his hair and staring at the steaming plate of potatoes and ham his old nanny had set in front of him. For once, he didn’t feel like eating it, even in a dream. “Hey guys, I’m back, and guess what? Magic’s real, and it saved my life.” _He saved my life._

Nobody in the dream responded. _Well. Even if Lalli was here, he probably wouldn’t be much help. I bet he's never had a religious crisis._ Emil thought, dragging himself to his feet going to sit on the couch he and Lalli had shared so many weeks ago in the depths of the Silent World. Outside the window, the distant orange flames crept closer and closer.

* * *

“Emil. Emil. _Emiiiiil_! Wake up!” Sigrun was banging on the wall, grinning widely as she pressed a sheet of paper covered in check marks and signatures to the glass. “One hour until we dock. Ugh, thank the gods, I’m sick of this place, do you think they’ll have good food in Iceland? I could really go for some...”

He stopped listening. Behind her, Lalli was waiting, rifle slung over his back and arms wrapped around his own middle. A long beige jacket was draped over his slender form, nearly swallowing him up, and Emil thought back to the clothes he had worn in their shared dreams: furs and birchbark and soft, supple leather. It had suited him so much better.

“We’ll be outside if you want us!” Sigrun chirped, grabbing Mikkel’s arm to steer him towards the stairs. Lalli and Reynir ambled after her, in far less of a hurry to be drenched in salt spray and cold grey mist. “I’m going to die if I don’t get some fresh air.”

He decided that he wouldn’t tell Siv and Torbjörn everything. They wouldn’t - couldn’t - understand, and if he explained the part about Lalli getting stuck in his mind, they’d surely come to the conclusion that Emil had gone mad under the stress of the Silent World. They’d pat his shoulder and give him those same stupid, sympathetic looks that the Icelandic crew had given them when they’d heard of Tuuri’s passing and Lalli’s grief, and he would be left to stew in the horrible, sickening feeling that maybe he _had_ imagined it all.

They would never get it, but it wasn’t Emil’s job to force them to. Lalli had never forced Emil to understand; the mage was secure in himself and what he knew was true. Nothing anyone said could change that. Emil had to come to the conclusion into his own time, but even if he had decided that what he had seen was all some sort of elaborate stress-induced hallucination, that wouldn't have changed the nature of what it _really_ was.

So what would he say to his aunt and uncle when they wrapped him in tearful, too-tight hugs and asked him what had happened, how had he managed to survive being separated from the crew and left to wander the Silent World with a man he couldn’t even understand?

 _“I’m here thanks to Lalli,”_ he would tell them, _“our mage.”_

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hi I'm here to remind you that you do not have to prove yourself to everyone who demands proof of your abilities! Their belief in you does not change your ability to do the thing. 
> 
> Bleeegh I feel like I've been in such a block lately. Nothing I write turns out how I want it to (and I'm definitely not satisfied with this, I wanted more magic!) Everything is fuzzy and I'm tired all the time, but when I try to sleep, my mind runs to the million things I have to do once I get back to Canada. Only a few more weeks, then two weeks in quarantine. Byuhhh.
> 
> This is a gift for the delightful acina_m, whose enthusiasm and encouragement was the driving force behind my finishing this at all. Thank you so very much, friend! All my love! (Also your fancomics are KILLING ME I love them.)
> 
> Now that I've finished this piece, which has been in the works for an embarrassingly long time, I'm going to get to work on my longer pieces, including the sequel to Lovely, Dark, and Deep.
> 
> I hope everyone is doing alright, and surviving the hot or cold months, depending on where in the world you live. Be safe and wear your masks!
> 
> xx.
> 
> Liv


End file.
